About the programme

The program Royal Concerts – Old Polish Music is an attempt to portray the courtly
and spiritual music of the 16th and 17th centuries and refers to the musical traditions of the
Wawel Cathedral in Cracow and the Royal Palace in Warsaw. This rich program presents a wide range
of different genres of instrumental and vocal-instrumental music. It aims to revive and popularize
the most important results of the Polish culture of the Renaissance and early Baroque and to
demonstrate its influence on the development of European culture.

Aldona Bartnik

Aldona Bartnik graduated in 2016 from the Royal Convervatoire in Hague where she studied
with Rita Dams, Peter Kooĳ, Michael Chance, Jill Feldman and Pascal Bertin. Before that, she graduated from
Wrocław Academy of Music in Violin and Singing.

Aldona has among other places performed in the Lincoln Centre New York, the Wigmore Hall in London, the
Royal Albert Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Tivolivredenburg Utrecht, at Boston Early Music Festival,
Utrecht Early Music Festival, MAFestival in Bruges and the International Festival
Wratislavia Cantans. Her artistic work brought her a nomination for the Polonus 2016
award. She performs regularly the Melancholia programme, dedicated to vocal works of K. Szymanowski,
F. Chopin and W. Lutoslawski. She was in the semi-final of the prestigious vocal competiton
Le Concours Corneille in France and in 2017 she received the 3rd price in the
IV. International Vocal Competiton Canticum Gaudium in Poznan.

One of her artistic achievements are six solo albums dedicated to Polish Early Music, which have been
nominated for the prestigious award Fryderyk. Her future plans include recording three solo albums with
the Melancholia programme in cooperation with the National Music Forum in Wrocław
(La Decollazione di S. Giovanni Battista by A. M. Bononcini). In
the season 2017/2018 she is Artist in residence of the Foundation Academy of Ancient Music in
Szczecin, funded by the Polish Institute of Music and Dance.

The Szczecin Vocal Project has been active since 2013 under the wings of the Academy of Ancient Music
in Szczecin. The ensemble’s repertoire links to the musical traditions of the city and of ancient Pomerania and
reminds of the achievements of the cantata school in Szczecin. SVP works according to traditional method of performing
solo e ripieno with one voice per part. The ensemble consists of leading vocalists of Szczecin, its
founder and artistic director is Paweł Osuchowski. SVP gives regularly concerts in Poland and abroad with
Consortium Sedinum and
Orkiestrą Famd.pl.

The very first concert season of SVP was exceptionally rich with an international tour of the ensemble, in which the
artists performed in Germany, Ukraine and Iceland. Since its inception, the ensemble has been involved in implementing
programmes of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in order to promote Polish culture abroad. SVP’s
artists also collaborate with international ensembles for Early Music: Agenda St. Jacob (Chemnitz), Concerto Gross
(Berlin), Funi (Reykjavik), A Cappella Leopolis (Lviv). The continuously expanding repertoire of the ensemble
contains works of the North German school of the 17th century, including motets by Philippe Dulichius, a master of the
Stettin (Szczecin) school, musical treasures of the Polish renaissance and baroque, and also the forgotten works of
Antonio Rosetti. SVP’s concerts are also enriched with songs in the classical style of vocal polyphony.

Thank you

The concert enjoys the auspices of
the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, PhDr. Ilja Šmíd.

It takes place with financial support from
the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

The project
Courtly and sacred music in the Visegrad countries
is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through
Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to
advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.